The Katrina Commission Report

By Thomas Gangale
16 September 2005

NEW NEW ORLEANS, LA. August 29, 2008.

Michael Nickersdown, who has succeeded Michael Chertoff as head of the Department of Hopeless Screwups (DHS), steps up to the microphone:

"Ladies and gentlemen of the press, my fellow Americans; I am pleased to announce today that the Katrina Commission has finished its work and has delivered its report to me."

The DHS Secretary gestures expansively to the floor of the newly rebuilt Louisiana Superdome, which is covered in neatly-bound volumes to a depth of approximately six feet.

"No expense has been spared, no stone left unturned. This blue-ribbon commission was carefully selected in an exhaustive process of interviews, hearings, and background checks that took more than two years to complete. The people of this great nation can rest assured that the result of this process was the selection of the largest and most outstanding group of posturing politicians, inept administrators, party hacks, and horse show has-beens, as well as numerous nephews of large campaign contributors.

"The Commission heard testimony from thousands of experts in the field of disaster response, from first responders with years of real-world experience to the finest minds in academia who have made scientific studies of the societal response, environmental effects, and economic repercussions of disasters on the scale of Hurricane Katrina. This testimony was invaluable in guiding the Commission in its mission to eschew the inclusion of any meaningful content in its findings, any placing of blame for the federal response to Katrina, or the recommending of any substantive preventive measures to either forestall or mitigate future calamities.

"The Commission was able to complete its work in just under a year, in time for this, the third anniversary of Katrina's landfall."

Secretary Nickersdown holds up a single sheet of paper. It contains a considerable amount of doodling.

"It's been hard work, but thanks to the hard work of these great American public servants, any semblance of a productive outcome has been assiduously avoided.

"However, there is a recommendation here, as I said. The Commission, having many years of first-hand experience with spending your tax dollars with little oversight or accountability, has decided that a massive reorganization of the federal government is in order. The Commission's report calls for the creation of a new layer of bureaucracy to protect the American people... or at least the ones that work for the government. All useless, inept, but faintly well-meaning officials will be transferred into a new Federal Employment of Mediocrities Administration (FEMA) that will have no responsibilities whatsoever, in the hope that they will no longer interfere with essential federal functions and services. However, the new agency will provide for the continuing payoff for political favors that is vital to our socioeconomic system."

Michael Nickersdown lifts up a newly-designed seal for the agency, containing the motto: QUANTILLA SAPIENTIA REGITUR MUNDUS--"With how little wisdom the world is ruled."

"I am also pleased to announce that the President has selected Michael Brown as the most qualified person to head this new agency.

"Thank you, and may God help the United States of America."